Multiphonon nuclear response in 16O: A microscopic treatment equivalent to the shell model

The electromagnetic response in O-16 is studied within a recently developed approach that generates iteratively a microscopic multiphonon basis well suited for reformulating and solving exactly the nuclear eigenvalue problem within spaces of large dimensions spanned by complex configurations. These multiphonon configurations are seen to modify appreciably, dramatically in some cases, the mean field response. This is shown to be increasingly affected by the center-of-mass motion as the number of phonons increases. The method for removing such a spurious motion is briefly outlined and the effects discussed.